


Always Stays the Same (Nothing Ever Changes)

by balthesar



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-04
Updated: 2012-07-04
Packaged: 2017-11-09 04:50:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/balthesar/pseuds/balthesar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock can't remember sitting for the photographer, can't remember ever liking the evidence of it, but it used to resolve into something, if dissatisfying, then at least coherent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always Stays the Same (Nothing Ever Changes)

_I. i'm in the basement, you're in the sky_

There is a photograph, in a shoebox relabelled “evidence, Jun-Aug '89” in Sherlock's distinctive scrawl, which is customarily stored in the cabinet directly below the microwave. The box is shoved to the back, behind a stack of dog-eared old phonebooks, a slowly-dessicating tub of spackle and washed-out jam jars. John – if he ever bothered to dig past the intimidating array – would be unlikely to recognize it.

Four people, perfectly posed, as formal as anything Holbein ever painted. A study of a family: Sherlock, looking at it now, cannot see it as a cohesive whole, but only in pieces, the small details. Mother's long nose, her long fingers, the way her hands cross on her peach-tinted skirt. His father's grey suit, three buttons on the sleeve where his hand rests on Mycroft's shoulder, the way his left foot turns out further than his right from the accident. Mycroft's flat brown hair lying limply over his protuberant forehead – already thinning, Sherlock thinks, at sixteen – and the smug jut of his chin, the stiff white collar of his uniform against the ink-black of his tailcoat. The long thick curls of Sherlock's hair, his high cheekbones already emerging, the white lace at the edge of his collar, the claret color of his frock. 

The photograph now is discordant, atonal. Sherlock can't remember the sitting, can't remember ever liking the evidence of it, but it used to resolve into something, if dissatisfying, then at least coherent.

_II. english summer rain seems to last for ages_

If you are planning to become the world's only consulting detective, you have to start young.

Deduction does not come simply. Like any other skill, it is one which must be developed, practiced rigorously, obsessively honed. Sherlock practiced first, like a surgeon learning his trade, on those closest to him. He watched the way women crossed their legs, the way they leaned into or away from people sitting beside them, the way they licked their lips, turned up their collars, held their handbags, walked or stumbled in high heels. He watched them as though perhaps through enough observation he would discover the key.

His applications were equally haphazard, marred by technical mistakes and a faintly grotesque flavour despite his best attempts. Lipstick was a nightmare. Whatever women did with their hair to make it hang nicely, Sherlock's hair was most manageable pulled back and securely tied. He looked more alien but hardly cared. Increasingly, alien suited him.

During the summers, Sherlock's insomnia became nearly complete. He spent long hours on the couch in the playroom, the flickering light of the television reflecting off the rain-washed windows, watching documentaries about the life cycle of blow-flies and the pathology of the Black Death, Socrates (hemlock) and JFK (bullets), Victorian séances (hoaxes) and phrenology (well, it explained Mycroft), old vampire films and re-runs of 'Star Trek'.

Sherlock liked Spock, understood him. Emotions were inevitable but undesirable. Logic was the correct approach. And if you were failing systematically, it was illogical not to change.

_III. fall apart and start again_

One of the first things Sherlock was sure of was that he did not want to become Mycroft. Mycroft was smug, so smug that Sherlock sometimes wanted to claw the look off his face, and content to sit on his arse like a spider at the centre of a web. He'd been a prefect at Eton and then read at Christchurch and promptly slid into a job working for Queen Lizzie where he'd never have to move out of his chair again. Mycroft seemed content to let life wash over him with an air of detached bemusement.

Sherlock wanted to punch life in the face. 

He started pushing, gently at first. He'd seen Mycroft's black umbrella in the stand by the door, the navy overcoat with the wide lapels on the hook. He could smell the celebratory roast and Yorkshire puddings, the first family dinner they'd assembled for since Mycroft's job offer. He wore trousers to the table, inexplicably angry at Mother's calf-length skirt and Mycroft's red tie, knotted in a half-Windsor that only just filled his collar, her laugh and Mycroft's languid, patronizing smile; angry at his father's pride in his brother, angry at the grey stubble of his father's hair above his white collar. Angry that Mycroft was the smart one and he was the pretty one. Father's pride, Mother's comfort.

Sherlock had ended up kicking Mycroft under the table hard enough to elicit a startled sharp word and was sent upstairs without pudding.

The next morning, he'd demanded a haircut, and when Mother had stopped the hairdresser cutting it too short, he'd taken a pair of scissors to it himself in the evening until Mother was forced to have it cleaned up properly. There was a feeling of inevitability to the entire matter: though the result was unusual, it was the only conclusion that logically fit the evidence.

_IV. hold your breath and count to ten_

After his father's death, though he was still in his family's house, Sherlock had more freedom. Mycroft felt obligated to take a greater interest in Sherlock's future and schooling, such that Sherlock felt it incumbent upon him to tell Mycroft where he might shove his interest. Still, Mother respected Mycroft's early success and so Sherlock's studies thereby became a sort of three-way dance between Mother's ambitions, Mycroft's opinions and Sherlock's interests. Mother's hope was for Sherlock to persue a similar trajectory to her elder son, loading up on languages in preparation for reading linguistics or political analysis; Mycroft suggested biology and anatomy so that Sherlock could persue medicine; Sherlock wanted chemistry and a free period in the library. He ended up failing Lit, scraping a pass in French and anatomy, and aced Chemistry. Mother had flung up her hands in frustration at the disparity but eventually grew tired of attempting to bully Sherlock into finishing homework. 

It wasn't as if he wasn't learning, though the maid had finally refused to clean Sherlock's room anymore, citing her health. Mother leaned in the doorway of his room, surveying the bookshelves crammed with sheafs of looseleaf paper, the jam jars of precipitate, books on serial killers and the psychology of violence, the skull of a chimp Mycroft had given him with unusual good humour for his fifteenth birthday, the phrenology bust that Sherlock had decorated with a bowtie stolen from his brother's closet.

"I can't imagine how studying an old storybook is going to contribute to my well-being," Sherlock said without taking his eye from the eyepiece of the microscope.

"It's the _Bible_ ," his mother replied with a hint of incredulity.

For extracurriculars, Mother had wanted Sherlock to continue playing classical violin. Mycroft had suggested fencing. Sherlock wanted to take up boxing. In the end, he compromised and did all three.

_V. i'm the basement, baby, drop on by_

It was probably good, that John didn't know about the last few years. He'd only worry. Mother had never found out about most of it either, considering how busy she'd become with her charities and, Sherlock suspected, moonlighting in his father's field. He was sure Mycroft knew all of it, though it was impossible to be sure, since Mycroft never seemed to act differently because of it; it was all in the shape of his disapproving half-frowns and the expression in his eyes.

Sherlock had been a spectacular fencer, though there wasn't much opportunity to whip out a foil on the mean streets of Kensington. He was also a natural boxer, and there was ample opportunity to test himself in a fistfight in the alleys of neighboring Earl's Court. He was thin and had barely begun to put on height, which meant the Polish and Aussie boys didn't give him much notice until he'd messily broken the nose of a much bigger lad named Jarek. After that, he was given a wide berth by all except the most reckless. Sherlock preferred it that way; after all, he was unlikely to be beaten up with good technical form in his chosen field.

He'd made friends with them eventually, shared cigarettes and street gossip. He'd made friends with dealers, who knew everyone's habits and who he bought cocaine from, to power his all-night research sessions, until he'd learned to synthesize it himself. He liked how alive he felt, how the nicotine and coke made his mind fly along even faster, how fighting pushed him to analyze every move a second before it happened with painful consequences for failure. Information, blood, hypothesis, conclusion.

Even then Mycroft had been watching, like a guardian angel in a sombre suit, because it was Mycroft who'd bundled Sherlock off to a discreet clinic for six months while Mother was in India working with orphans, where Sherlock's coke habit had gotten better and the cigarettes had gotten worse. It was Mycroft who'd pulled strings with the NHS and who put Sherlock up at his house in the Lake District during recovery. Sherlock couldn't see what Mycroft got out of helping him but he appreciated it, and in return he rewarded Mycroft with concert-quality performances of Bartók and Prokofiev once he was able to raise his arms high enough to hold the violin.

_VI. always stays the same, nothing ever changes_

Sherlock had gone from cigarettes to patches and had mostly kept off anything stronger, which is why it was ironic that John had come to entirely the wrong conclusion when he'd found the coffee can Sherlock used as a sharps container in the closet-sized lavatory off Sherlock's bedroom. Sherlock was largely disinterested in dating -- though he still often thought of The Woman -- because relationships were messy, human and illogical. There was no one worth compromising his work for, no one he'd met that warranted coddling their egos to the point of distraction. Which is why he'd even surprised himself when he'd allowed himself to seduce John -- for research purposes, Sherlock told himself as he lay on his bed afterwards, still in his shirtsleeves and trousers; an in-depth study of the physiological and psychological effects of oral stimulation on PTSD-afflicted veterans -- and why John had been using his bathroom at all.

"Sherlock," John said with the cautious, slightly concerned tone that so often crept into his voice around Sherlock, "did you know you have a can full of syringes by the toilet?"

"Yes." He figured he'd change it over to an approved container the next time he could get John into a hospital to nick one.

John let out an irritated huff. Until Sherlock's patience ran out, he always tried to answer the question that was asked, not the question that was implied; he figured it trained those around him to be precise. "What I meant to ask is: why do you have a can full of syringes by the toilet? You're not--" John's voice faltered.

"No, Doctor, I am not a heroin addict," Sherlock said with the sort of faintly mocking sarcastic tone he used with simpletons.

"Okay, then..."

Sherlock sat up, the sheets rustling. "It's a long story."

**Author's Note:**

> I was reading a Dreamwidth post on "Sherlock" (BBC) fandom and the FTM!Sherlock trope, but after reading a few of the fics, there was something slightly wrong nagging at the back of my head. It wasn't that they were poorly written, because I think all of them that I read were /good/ in that regard, and it wasn't that they were explicitly offensive to transmen, because they /weren't/...
> 
> I think the thing that was bothering me about the FTM!Sherlock fics I've read was that they were primarily concerned with exposing Sherlock's condition as trans, like his birth name and the lurid details of his body. It feels gimmicky and freakshowy, even in a fic. (It reminds me of other posts I've read, discussing the difference between "naked", which is honest and seeing the person as they really are, and "nude", which is objectifying and dishonest in that it projects an agenda onto the undressed person.) Not that a narrative can't ever discuss transition or whatever, but the way some of the fics have this kind of "Girl name! Vagina! Sherlock's not like the real mens! Sherlock is a SHE!" makes me kind of wish fandom would go find something else.
> 
> Anyway, maybe I'm just touchy; gods know I could probably froth at the mouth about this for hours. So here's me being the change I want to see in the world, so to speak, and writing fic for the first time in a long time.


End file.
